Title: Maybe Not All Muggle Things Are That Bad
Team: Caerphilly Catapults
Position: Chaser 1
Round: QL Daily Prophet Expelliarmus Competition
Prompt: Waddiwasi– [action] a play fight (like with water guns or a pillow fight)
Additional Prompts used: N/A
Word count: 1360
Betas: Bea
A/N Some Muggle-born have founded a Muggle-born's club at Hogwarts so they can talk about, and use the crazes that they are exposed to when back at home with old friends. Also, if they can confuse the pure-bloods with them, all the better.
"So, we're agreed then," the President of the Muggle-born club said to the assembled club of Muggle-born's. "We'll each bring one back after the Easter holidays? The weather will be getting nicer then and it'll be a perfect time to have fun with them."
"Yes," chorused the rest of the Muggle-born's.
"The Pure-bloods are going to be so confused."
"Will we agree to meet in the grounds on the first nice weekend after the Easter holidays?"
There was a chorus of yeses and much nodding to this suggestion.
The first weekend back after the Easter holidays was glorious. The sun was shining and there was barely a cloud in the sky. There was a lot of excited muttering at breakfast that morning and it wasn't just the Muggle-born club that was excited. It was just about every Muggle-born in the school or anyone who had a Muggle upbringing. Members of the club had excitedly told their Muggle-raised friends about what was going down after Easter and they had told their Muggle-raised friends. So currently, about half the school was eagerly awaiting breakfast to be over. There was a lot of excited chatter in the hall about 'after breakfast'. The teachers were watching from their table with interest, wondering what had got the students so excited and the Pure-bloods were bewildered. What could be so exciting at Hogwarts that the Muggle-borns knew of and they didn't? After all, they had been raised in the magical world. So, when breakfast was over and half of the school made a mass exodus for the grounds outside, the Pure-bloods followed, trying to be nonchalant but failing miserably. They sat around in house groups by the shore of the lake and under the large oak tree, watching the Muggle-borns with more interest than some of them ever thought possible.
The Muggle-borns seemed to be organising themselves into teams, as if they were getting ready to have a snowball fight. There was a lot of laughter and some of the older Muggle-borns were busy in the centre of the group doing something. There were a lot of flashes of light and a growing…something in the middle of them. When they were all arranged into teams, they all dived to grab as many… potatoes as possible from the large pile the older students had made. What on earth were they going to do with the potatoes? No longer pretending to be nonchalant, the Pure-bloods moved closer, utterly bewildered as to why anyone would need so many potatoes or why there was a great deal of fighting over which teams got the last of them.
"Ready?" someone shouted.
A huge chorus of, "ready" answered them."Go," someone else shouted.
The Muggle-borns all pulled out some weird shaped, red metal objects and proceeded to stab the tip of the red object into the potatoes. The next thing the Pure-bloods knew, the air was full of little pieces of potatoes, flying through the air at the other teams. They stabbed the potatoes, and launched the piece, then stabbed the potatoes again.
"What, in the name of Merlin, are they doing?" a Pure-blood said to nobody in particular.
"No idea," someone answered.
"It looks like they're having a snowball fight but with bits of potato launched out of those stabbers," someone else said.
There was a great deal of shrieking and laughing going on. People were running around chasing after friends on other teams and attempting to launch the potato pieces at them from as close a range as possible. A couple of people spotted the bewildered looks on the faces of the Pure-bloods and laughed harder. Soon, many of the Muggle-borns were glancing over and laughing and still the air was thick with flying potato pieces. Despite the absolute absurdity of what was happening, it looked like fun, at least they all looked like they were having fun and the Pure-bloods wanted in on that fun. There was no disguising the look of being left out on their faces, even if they didn't get the joke.
"Aw, damn it," a Muggle-born said, coming to a halt near the group of Pure-bloods with his friend. "My Spud-guns jammed. Damn piece won't fire."
Their what was jammed?
"Have you got anything I can use to dig it out?" the first one asked their friend.
"Nope, but I have an idea," the friend said, pulling out their wand and pointing it at the 'spud gun'. "Waddiwasi."
The piece of potato that had been blocking the spud gun rocketed out with the force of a bullet, bouncing off the first person's face.
"Ouch, that was surprisingly sore," he said as he and his friend laughed.
"Hey, that would make it more interesting," a third person nearby said, spotting what had happened.
It didn't take long for the information to pass around the group and soon shouts of "Waddiwasi" could be heard all though the grounds and pieces of potato were flying twenty feet or more through the air at great speed and with a lot less control. Errant pieces of potato were soon whizzing past the heads of the assembled Pure-blood's who shrieked and ducked.
"Oops, sorry," someone called while jogging over to the watching group. "You guys alright?"
"What are you doing?" someone asked the question they all wanted to know.
"We're having a spud gun fight."
"What in the name of Morgana is a spud gun?" a second Pure-blood asked.
"This," the Muggle-born held out the red thing. "It's a Muggle toy, like a water pistol but for firing bits of potato instead."
"What's a water pistol?"
"Oh geez. Well, a gun is a Muggle weapon, used for killing someone. Some of them are similar to this in shape, although I doubt you'd find a red one," the Muggle-born laughed. "Even though they aren't widely owned in this country, kids have toy ones, which is weird if you think about it, but never mind. A water pistol would fire water at someone, like if you used 'Aguamenti'. These ones are designed to fire little pieces of potato. You stick the muzzle, that's this bit here," they pointed at the front of the long bit sticking out, "into the potato, it picks up a piece of the potato, see, you can see it in there, and pull the trigger. That's this bit," they pointed to the trigger. "And it launches the potato piece out."
"Why though?"
"Well, it's fun. Like a snowball fight that you can have in the summer. Do you want a shot?" the Muggle-born said holding out the spud gun to the Pure-blood, who took it carefully and copied what the Muggle-born had done, firing a little piece of potato at their friend, who shrieked, ducked and then burst out laughing saying, "Ha, you missed me."
By now, several other Muggle-borns had come over to see what was happening.
"Just explaining a spud gun to them," the first Muggle-born said.
"Do they want to join in?" a second one asked.
"We don't have a spud gun," a Pure-blood answered.
"Well, that's easily solved," laughed a third Muggle-born, gesturing to some of the older students to join them. "We have wands too. A quick duplication charm and we'll soon have one for everyone."
Five minutes later, the group of watching Pure-bloods all had a duplicated spud gun, several potatoes and joined in the fun. Maybe not all Muggle things were so bad after all. The air was once again full of shouts of "Waddiwasi", which was now everyone's preferred way of firing the spud gun, and missiles of potato.
By the time they stopped for lunch, everyone was breathless with laughter and running about. Most people had at least one little red mark where they had been struck by a high-sped potato piece and the grass where they had the fight was no longer green, but the pale creamy colour of the inside of a potato, from all the projectiles. Laughing and slipping over the potatoes they all made their way back inside for lunch. The once large divide between the Pure-bloods and the Muggle-borns, now had several bridges across it.